Wednesday, July 30, 2008

The popular game maker Hasbro has scored a high pointer that put Scrabulous on Facebook into game over (shutdown) in the U.S. and Canada after they filed a lawsuit against the popular Facebook game in New York court.Mattel, which owns the rights to Scrabble elsewhere, has filed suit in India, where the two brothers (Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla behind Scrabulous) reside.

The shutdown came a week after Hasbro sued the Agarwallas and their company, RJ Softwares, for copyright infringement in New York federal court.

In a statement issuedby the Agarwallas:

In deference to Facebook’s concerns and without prejudice to our legal rights, we have had to restrict our fans in USA and Canada from accessing the Scrabulous application on Facebook until further notice. This is an unfortunate event and not something that we are very pleased about, especially as Mattel has been pursuing the matter in Indian courts for the past few months. We will sincerely hope to bring to our fans brighter news in the days to come.

In a recent development after the shutdown, when the word action lovers shifted to the official version of Scrabble, the game isn't working.

Electronic Arts reports that official version of Scrabble isn't working because they say it's fallen victim to a "malicious attack."

Hackers had taken down the game. It was rendered unplayable for most of the day and still didn't work. Their still uncertain if the attack was orchestrated by fans of Scrabulous.